


Lay Your Head

by kiaronna



Series: YOI One-Shots [3]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Fluff, Literal Sleeping Together, Look every YOI fic should be tagged with bedsharing but we don't because that's basically canon, M/M, Mutual Pining, No Angst, SOMP, Sharing a Bed, Summer of mutual pining, this one is SPECIFICALLY about it soooo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-11
Updated: 2018-02-11
Packaged: 2019-03-16 20:14:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13643640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiaronna/pseuds/kiaronna
Summary: By the time they end up sharing a bed, they’ve already slept next to each other everywhere else.





	Lay Your Head

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cafecliche](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cafecliche/gifts).



> Oh my god the OLYMPICS OKAY  
> This is for the lovely cafecliche, who was one winner of my fic giveaway (from forever ago), and whose prompt happened to get finished first. You are eternally patient, friend. Thank you. I hope this is the appropriate level of fluffy.

By the time they end up sharing a bed, they’ve already slept next to each other everywhere else.

Rumbling trains, Yuuri’s head pillowed on his shoulder and Viktor’s nuzzled into his dark crown. In the beginning, Viktor had stayed awake every time—Yuuri’s breaths sweet and deep, his right shoulder rising and falling perfectly in the space beneath Viktor’s arm. Like they were made to fit this way.

Viktor wasn’t going to sleep through that feeling.

“I like the vibration,” Yuuri had confessed, once, palm flipped up before his inspecting eyes. His legs are stretched out, sneaker toes up, like he’s inviting Viktor to press their soles together across the aisle. Yuuri’s never sat that way, before. “It makes me feel solid. Real.” Makes him present, lets him know where he is. Takes the jittering of his mind and rattles it until the anxious shaking could just be the inconsistent thrum of the train.

On beaches, too, after hours spent chasing Makkachin through the waves on bare feet, wet sand sucking on their toes. They retreat to the dusty warmth of dry sand—Yuuri blooms a parasol, sets out two blankets, muscles in his arms rolling as he snaps them in the air.

Viktor lays down on the blue one, even though he knows who it’s meant for.

A month ago, Yuuri would have wordlessly taken the pink. Assumed Viktor wasn’t paying attention. Now, he leaves the pink blanket empty. Splays himself at Viktor’s side, chin propped up in his hand.

“This one’s mine.”

“I _like_ this one.” It smells of the onsen. Home.

“I know,” Yuuri says, “I chose the best blanket for me. I’m very selfish, Viktor.”

At least one of these statements is a lie. The blue blanket is worn, the pink clearly new. Purchased, probably, just for today. Viktor almost feels bad for not using it.

Yuuri puts a hand on Viktor’s bare chest—all that skin, warmer than the humid air, warmer than anything Viktor’s ever felt—and pushes.

Viktor rolls helplessly. All too willing. At least, until he feels the sun lapping at his shoulder, the wavering shadow of the parasol’s edge tickling the center of his chest.

Viktor rolls back, too quick, practically flattens his companion.

“I’ll _burn_ , Yuuri!”

“This is why your blanket is over _there_ ,” Yuuri retorts, edge of his smile ticking up, and yes. It’s squarely in the center of the shade, a quiet and unassuming testament to Yuuri’s care. Viktor still won’t use it.

“Save me,” he whispers.

Yuuri lets out a punch of air—one of his laughs, Viktor thinks. He’s still categorizing them. Still getting used to someone who has different laughs, sleepy ones and incredulous and muffled and biting and lilting and nervous and _tender_.

Viktor used to only have one kind of laugh: practiced.

“Crossing over,” is the only warning Viktor gets before suddenly, Yuuri Katsuki has him nestled between his arms in the sand, body propped up over Viktor. “The sacrifices I make for you, Viktor.”

There’s that strange sparkle in his eyes, like he expects Viktor to find the last statement as ridiculous and amusing as he does. Like Yuuri doesn’t make sacrifices, not really. Like Viktor makes all of them.

It’s Yuuri, there, all flushed cheeks and muted grin as he rotates again, flips onto his back on the opposite side of Viktor. But he’d been above him, around him, straddled him—warm expression centimeters from Viktor’s own—

Viktor credits two decades of self-suppression and five years of acting for him being able to maintain any kind of calm.

Yuuri, on the other hand, takes this opportunity to promptly nap. It’s not the first time Viktor has fallen asleep with the crisp sea breeze sweeping over him, Yuuri defenseless and all-powerful at his side. It won’t be the last, either. His student’s head lolls, shifting in his sleep, and Viktor’s heart bangs against its cage of bone.

 _Let me be with him_.

 _Soon_ , he promises himself. _Maybe soon._

 

* * *

 

They’ve slept together on, of all things, the benches in Ice Castle Hasetsu. Some kind of accident on the ice—Viktor doesn’t want to know all the details—means they’re stuck. Waiting, in the late afternoon, in the dimness of the changing room. Yuuri, eyes squeezed shut, head leaned back against a blue locker.

(“I painted it,” he’d admitted, once, when Viktor had found a tiny poodle sticker underneath the peeling blue. “The owner before the Nishigoris gave me his son’s old skating gear.”)

There are more comfortable chairs in Ice Castle Hasetsu. One word, one plaintive peek of those brown eyes, and Viktor would carry Yuuri there. Snuggle up with him, on the plush armchair in the corner of Yuuko’s office.

Instead, Yuuri’s eyes stay firmly closed, and he curls one leg up under him.

“Twenty minutes to nap,” he murmurs, circling one shoulder up and down against the unforgiving metal of the lockers. “The benefit of the men’s locker room is that the triplets are not men.”

Ah. There is that.

Viktor sits—not too close, not too far. One of Yuuri’s eyes flutters open, a single pitch rumbling from his throat.

He shouldn’t. Yuuri’s interest is still an inconsistent, fleeting thing—burning bright one moment, burned out the next, gaze distant and cold and trained anywhere but Viktor’s face.

Viktor pats his lap anyway, an invitation. Yuuri swallows, Adam’s apple bobbing in the perfect arc of his neck.

“Oh.” The way he flusters is quieter, now. Less frantically waving arms, more internal panic. “I’m pretty practiced at sleeping against these lockers? So I’m okay.” Viktor has already braced himself for the rejection; it’s not a surprise. It’s not—“would you like to?”

Yuuri is patting his lap. That _is_ a surprise. Viktor tries to do the opposite of diving face-first into Yuuri’s thighs, and is pretty sure he fails at that. And at not keening, just a little, when his cheek presses into one.

A careful study of Katsuki Yuuri reveals that his legs and knees are, at all angles, indubitably perfect.

“Can you…” Yuuri begins, and Viktor already wants to beg _yes yes yes yes yes_. “Set a timer?”

Easy enough. Maybe if he sets a timer, or passes the rice at dinner, or checks Yuuri’s form on his crunches when he asks, Yuuri will start asking him for everything else, too.

Some people might say Viktor is begging for scraps. But nothing from Yuuri is a scrap—not the quiet shiver when Viktor nuzzles his cheek against Yuuri’s leg, not his contented sigh as he drifts towards sleep, not the way he half-consciously cards his hand through Viktor’s hair.

“ _Nap_ ,” Yuuri sleepily commands, because Viktor can hear Yuuri thinking, but Yuuri can hear Viktor thinking, too.

If this is how he’ll get close to Yuuri, he’ll happily take it.

 

* * *

 

On porches in summer, Yuuri can sleep through fireworks. Viktor knows because he’s _seen_ , knows because Yuuri had carried him home from the festival and they’d tried, desperately, to stay awake for Hasetsu’s modest celebration. But it had been a long day—the food in Yuuri's belly the heaviest he’d allowed in months. Shaved ice melting in his hands, he’d nodded off. Drops of blue, dripping onto his knee, fireworks splattering and rolling down the dark sky above. Peaceful and loud. His head atop Viktor’s head, atop Yuuri’s shoulder, both of them barely balancing atop this _thing_ between them, so beautiful and brutal, so peaceful and loud.

 _I love you_ , Viktor says, or maybe he doesn’t. Maybe it’s a dream. It’s been a long day for him, too.

* * *

 

There’s only so many dishes that Viktor can wash before he becomes impatient. Mari, ever dry, pops her head in for updates every time Viktor makes a lap of the kitchen.

“Not home yet.”

Studio time is something Viktor could never begrudge, but Yuuri is late. Surely Yuuri must be _hungry_. The thought makes Viktor aggravated, has him pulling off his slippers and toeing on loafers, starting the brisk walk to Minako’s.

When he first sees Yuuri, flat on the glossy wooden floor in the dark, Viktor assumes the worst.

 _No no no, he’s too young, he’s too—what am I going to tell his parents—what am I going to_ do—

Yuuri, everywhere and everything, flashes through his head, and then his life—back to Russia, to cold and uninspired ice and looking at his own blank eyes in the mirror, to Makkachin whining pitifully, heartbreakingly, at the door when he first comes home.

He’s already bent over Yuuri, ready for CPR or perhaps to cut his own heart out of his chest to hand over, when he realizes.

Yuuri’s _asleep_. Or at least, he was. At Viktor’s frantic pawing, he wakes, blinking blearily and blindly up.

“Viktor?”

“Did you hit your head? Yuuri, please—“

A finger is sloppily pressed to his lips.

“ _Shhhh_.”

Perhaps this was intentional.

“You can’t be sleeping here, Yuuri!”

“I was doing it perfectly well before you came in.” The finger traces over his lip, drags it down. Viktor ignores the feeling as it sizzles down his spine.

“It’s late at night—“

“Hence the _sleeping_. Why are… why are you awake?” Finally, he sits up, amber eyes focusing. “Is everything okay?”

Viktor tries, really tries, not to go bright red. At least he has the cover of evening, of moonlight streaming from the studio’s small, slanted windows. “I got worried. You’re usually back by now.”

It says something, that Viktor recognizes the way Yuuri pulls his knees to his chest. “Oh,” he says. “That’s… true. I’m just a little. Ah.” His eyes scatter to the mirror, then seem to regret it. “I was overthinking things? Movement helps. Sometimes I fall asleep after, especially if I know I’ll probably panic again later…. So.”

Yuuri had come here to break down, and break himself down.

Viktor is tempted to say many things. _You didn’t tell me._

_I would’ve held you._

_I love you, so don’t make that expression, like you think I’m going to run away._

_You’re the one who always runs away_.

But saying any of those things wouldn’t get his message across. They wouldn’t help Yuuri.

“You’re going to stay here?” He asks, instead. Yuuri lies back.

“Probably?”

Slowly, minding his knees, Viktor takes his coat off. Settles on the wooden floor, tosses the downy fabric over them both. He’s tucking it carefully beneath his chin, shifting his hips against the unforgiving surface below, when Yuuri takes his hand.

“There is nothing,” he says, “that I—“ he quiets, lips wobbling, brow low, redirects in a whisper. “Nothing more precious than you, Viktor.”

There have been many compliments, over the years. Viktor has drowned in them.

None were ever so heartfelt. None ever meant this _much_.

“Viktor,” Yuuri says, slowly, “I’m not going to let you sleep on the floor.”

“I’m not going to let you sleep on the floor _alone_.”

Nobody’s ever laughed into Viktor’s shoulder before, all disbelief and delight, heated breath on his upper arm.

“Okay,” Yuuri says then, all velvet, “okay.”

Then, with staccato hesitance— _stop and go, stop and go_ — he slips a hand beneath Viktor’s lower back.

Years, Viktor has spent being intimately familiar with his own body. Here is the muscle he pulled back in the Spring of 2008. Here is the one that pleasantly, constantly burns during his spins. This strip of skin needs a stretch; this knotted mound a massage.

One little touch from Yuuri, and Viktor has been rocketed back to lanky adolescence. His limbs ungainly and shivering, his body new, magnetically seeking every possible pleasure.

A thousand daydreams are launched with just a brush of Yuuri’s hand. It takes him what feels like hours to realize. Cradled, between the soft pads of Yuuri’s fingers and his wrist, are Viktor’s hips and tailbone. Supportive—and much more forgiving than the floor.

 _I can’t believe_ , Viktor thinks, and it must show all over his face, in his breathy sigh. Yuuri burns dim in the dark, all apologies and embarrassment—but he waits to move his hand. Waits, tense, for the rejection he seems sure will come.

It’s Viktor. Always rejected, never rejecting. Yuuri should know by now. Yuuri seems to know everything else that Viktor’s been hiding; why not this?

“This is nice,” Viktor murmurs, as he’s tipping towards the dark precipice of sleep, “but next time… let’s use a bed?”

Viktor thought he might get a laugh, if lucky. Instead, he falls asleep to Yuuri’s wide amber eyes, his shaky breath—not a laugh, Viktor doesn’t _think_ —and one word. _Yes_.

* * *

 

On their love, they sleep.

They wake with Minako’s foot nudging them—or at least, Viktor does. He vaguely remembers Yuuri waking, shifting, standing and moving throughout the night.

But he’d always rotated back, settled again at Viktor’s side.

“I admit I thought you’d stop this,” Minako says, “not join in on it.”

“We’ll be in the studio all night, if his moves aren’t satisfactory,” Viktor grins. He was raised in Yakov’s rink—he knows the phrases to use, even if he can’t mimic the gruffness of his old mentor. “What kind of coach do you take me for?”

Minako pauses, for a moment. “You’ve got drool on your chin, and sleep in your eyes.”

“Ah,” says Viktor, and then he and Yuuri make a quick exit.

* * *

 

In the end, it’s Makkachin (it’s always Makkachin) who makes the final step possible.

She’s whuffling atop Viktor’s bed, tail thumping happily as Viktor finishes his nightly routines in the bathroom. Yuuri is there too, a disagreement about his free skate long-dead on his lips. Crouched at the bedside, popping up to rub her fleece belly and eskimo kiss her wet nose, until she rolls and wiggles across the covers to stare plaintively at Viktor across the room.

“It’s toothpaste, baby girl—“

And Yuuri’s already dropped on his stomach, splayed across the mattress, smothering her in attention.

“Your dad won’t give you the delicious toothpaste, will he? Just stares at the mirror, leaving you _abandoned_ over here with _nobody_ to love you, what will you _do_?“

Viktor can’t let this stand. Finished with his routine, he strides back into the bedroom, perches on the edge of his bed to cover his poodle’s ears.

“Feeding my little girl these scary thoughts, Yuuri, how could you—“

“At least I’m feeding her, can’t you see that she has clearly been starved? She needs toothpaste to _live_ , Viktor. The scraps my dad and Mari _and_ you snuck her at dinner were not enough.”

Viktor is going to have to adjust how many times he gives in to Makkachin’s begging. How long will it take, to be used to other people—a _family_ —living and breathing and loving even when he’s not watching?

Maybe as long as it’s taken for him to be used to Yuuri, yawning, that familiar sleep-soft looseness in his proud frame. A few months, just a blink—and at the same time, never. He’ll never be used to it, will never stop the frantic hammering of his chest.

“Come on,” Viktor says, pulling the covers back, “bedtime.”

He means it for Makkachin, but Yuuri’s the one who plucks at the sheets next to his shoulder. Yuuri is the one who watches him, carefully, blue frames hanging on the tip of his nose as he ducks his head.

“Which side is yours?”

The middle. But it doesn’t matter, now. Yuuri’s glasses come off his face. Viktor folds them, settles them safely on his nightstand.

“Whichever side you’ll be on.”

A smile, a shaking of his head. “You’re going to steal the side I want, Viktor?”

“Mmm. We’ll share it.” Would it be too much, to walk his fingers up Yuuri’s knee, to skate all the way up his chest to his throat? To feel him nervously swallow, to see if his blush rubs off on Viktor’s hands. “But it’s your pick. You’re the guest, Yuuri.”

“It’s my onsen,” Yuuri laughs, but Viktor _has him_.

Viktor knows, he knows. He has him.

They’ve slept on rumbling train cars and in locker rooms, on beaches and benches under cherry blossoms. After all these things, they’ve come to rest in Viktor’s bed. An easy conclusion, a natural continuation. From the first time their eyes fluttered closed together, hearts beating in unconscious tandem, they were going to end up here.

They’ve slept together everywhere else. A bed is nothing special in the face of what they’ve had, will have, and still it means everything.

“See you in the morning,” Yuuri says, his head on Viktor’s chest.

Viktor wants it to be a promise, instead of a phrase. _See you every morning_.

“Sweet dreams,” Viktor replies, to distract himself. Yuuri thinks, _I’m already having them_.

The season ends, but it feels like that summer never will.

Not _falling_ in love, this time, but a summertime of descent. Slow, steady, picking where and how to land gently, feathers in a breeze. Perfect. Viktor wants it to be smooth, for Yuuri. Wants it painless.

It’s love, so it won’t be any of those things, but at least they’ll end up together.

 _I love you_ , they both think they manage to say that night, yet nothing breaks the quiet.


End file.
